WorldHaus has designed a 20-square meter house (220-square feet) built of interlocking compressed earth-bricks, steel and polystyrene roof panels, and concrete.

Most of the materials are assembled on site, and the house can be built for $1,500 in 10 days.

The houses come in 1, 2, and 3-room models, with optional toilets, LED-TV screens, solar cooling and heating, and cook-stoves. They provide solid, weather-tight housing for about half the price of a normal brick-and-mortar house.

According to WorldHaus, 1.5 billion people in the developing world live in make-shift houses built of corrugated tin, mud, boards, or whatever else their inhabitants can lay hands on. That's where the Worldhaus house comes in.

The first WorldHaus house was just completed in Chennai, India. The company hopes to build 5,000 houses by the end of next year, and a million by 2020.

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The bricks are waterproof, as they are shielded from rain by the roof, and usually baked to have some inherent resistance.

Solar heating probably means the front is aimed south, with that large overhang. Low, wintery sunlight goes below the overhang and light and heats the home. Summery sun is shaded by the overhang. Brick construction at the fore of the home, and on the floor, acts as a heat trap. This captures the heat from the sunlight during wintery days, and releases it through the night. You can see this classic technique used in the Spanish missions all along California. Scoff at it, if you want, but it works, and it's free.

I don't get the bulk of the comments on this article. It's like they're written by a bunch of xenophobic kids. Have you guys ever been outside of the US, excluding your backpacking trip to Paris? It's a big world, and not everybody has mastered wasting resources as we have.

Toilets are optional (and indoor plumbing would be considered quite the luxury in some third world countries) - I think this is a brilliant alternative option to some of the horrendous shacks I've seen in Africa and parts of Asia, though I admit to considering the cost a bit steep.

What a great way to go. Cheap and with a little acreage you could be almost entirely self sufficient. The problem would be zoning. Most counties near where I live require 600 sq ft to get a building permit for a residence. The local governments would collect little or no property tax on this set up and you know they will fight that prospect with all they have got.

The compressed earth bricks seem like a big variable here - how long does it take to make them? How are they made? They look baked to me so I assume they need a kiln-type oven to fire them. If this was the Arizona desert sure you could leave them out in the sun like adobe bricks but the moisture in India wouldn't make this possible. Still, if they can be using a standard mold and you can crank out thousands of them easily enough it seems like a great design. Surely these are better than the lean-to that is common.

This is Daniel Gross, President of WorldHaus. This is a great question. The blocks are dried in the sun rather than baked in an oven. We actually just built our first house in one of the wettest parts of India (Tamil Nadu) and the blocks do not have a curing problem. The blocks are produced in a press that allows us to use soil on-site and produce several thousand blocks per day. Happy to answer further questions!

One version of compressed earth bricks are made of soil, sand, cement and quarry dust. For example, (based on the quality of the soil), the ratio of cement:sand:quarydust:soil is 1:1:1:10.
When the mixture, sprinkled with water is compressed into the brick form and cured for 15 days becomes like a rock. In most cases, these bricks are made on site from the soil that was dug out for the foundation. These bricks are used in contemporary large homes (10000+ sq ft).

This is GREAT! Could this plan be adapted for above the ground bomb/tornado/emergency shelter? What would be necessary to make this an expedient shelter for these purposes? I could see these fitting right in with American emergency planning, for instance. I would love to create one of these!

So, 0.79% of the world's GDP to house the world's poorest 21%. Seems like its not incredibly out of reach when considered from that perspective. That's less than one bailout or stimulus bill, none of which have solved anything. This would actually solve something.